Should Extended Range be further modified?

[Bismarck]

A lot of good things came out of the rule addendum that was issued a few weeks ago. One of them was that DDs and TBs are now immune to extended range gunnery. But shouldn´t extended range have been modified even further since changes were made in the first place? A lot of people have commented on how strange it is that battleships keep the same firepower at range 5 as they do at range 3. Cruisers are pretty much always hit successfully by battleships at extended range which is one of the biggest flaws of the game right now in my opinion.

Some sort of hit probability reduction would have been necessary to reflect any sort of common sense I think. Something like a -1 per die at extended range perhaps.

What do you think?

[Torps]

You make a good point.
This thought struck me:
You fire a ship's main armament at extended range and count the 'successes'.
e.g. Scharnhorst rolls 11 dice at a target at range four and gets two 6s, one 5, and three 4s. That is eight successes.
How about we use the success rolls from an extended range attack as the actual number of rolls made to inflict damage.
e.g. Scharnhorst has had eight successes against the Rodney at range four and thus rolls eight dice to determine actual damage caused;this time getting one 6, and three 4s - thus five successes. Rodney is unaffected but a cruiser would have been damaged.

Just an idea. On average it should roughly halve damage a ship inflicts at extended range.

[Admiral Dawe]

Well what if you were to subtract from die results, say to the point that only 6s count as hits (still counting as two).

[doganpc]

Interesting. What are the pros and cons of -1 to total dice and -1 to dice rolls?

Who do you want to penalize more, the heavy battleships(Iowa,Rodney) or the battlecruisers(Hood,Scharnhorst)?

Will it make a significant difference and is it the effect you want (save cruisers, reduce extended range power)

Does it scale, can a new player with few ships take advantage of this or is it mainly focused on guys with complete sets and then some.

Doganpc
some things to think about before you go subtracting things.

[Richter von Manthofen]

KISS (keep it short and simple)

Range 4 - success at 5+
Range 5 - success at 6

ER does NOT go away when damaged

[Vornargith]

I think I'll stick with reducing dice vs. rolls. Affecting the actual rolls hurts too much. I know we're all looking for ways to circumvent the BBs' awesome firepower, but there really is no way to do it without getting in harm's way.

BTW: 6 PT boats wiped out an Iowa in a game this weekend.

[maxh]

Fear the PT swarm!:D

In my local game I've been banned from running PT sweeps after I defeated 2 different players running the USS Tennessee and a mob of PT boats. Before the rule change PT and Fletcher swarms were dangerous, now they are terrifying. The swarm is effectively immune to battleship gunnery at range with the new rules and the PT's have the added benefit of speed 3 and can dash into close range and unload torpedoes before any of the other ships can fire on them. Combine that with high speed evasion and shallow draft and your battleship pounding the rest of the fleet and you have a very effective build. The only weakness is planes or another swarm of small combatants.

Personally I like the idea of subtracting -1 or -2 die from a range 5 attack but that would contradict the card and wouldn't do much to help the cruisers. The brutal truth is that this is the reason cruisers in real life avoided engaging battleships in gunnery duels. The Battle of Cape Matapan and the WW1 Battle of the Falkland Islands showed what can happen to cruisers that get caught in gunnery range of a battleship or battlecruiser.

[Torps]

Fair call, everyone.:o
My suggestion was both too limiting and too complicated.

[Greyh Seer]

Despite the issues, I believe there is a rule that limits the maximum number of ships you can field...

[PaulG]

I think we have to look at what happens when a battleship scores a hit in game terms.

I'd say it's landing a 15" brick on target as you're unlikely to get more than 1 hit out of several salvos unless you are at point blank range. What ER represents is radar assisted gunnery and advanced optics. In my view what ER represents isn't that you can shoot that farm as all BBs had the equivalent of being able to shoot to ER 5, but the fact that the gunnery system is advanced enough that you have a decent prospect of landing a hit at that range.

If you get walloped by a 15" brick that's enough to do serious damage to whoever you are, and it doesn't really matter if that brick flew 15kms or 25kms, it's still going to hurt a lot.

[dracos42]

I like the idea of reducing total gunnery dice at extended range. How about a 2 dice reduction for range 4, and another 2 dice reduction at range 5? The dice reduction would be from the range 3 gunnery values.

Mike L.